Post by Mattsby on May 22, 2018 20:14:34 GMT
Thought I’d swing stephen ’s comments into its own thread. Hope you don't mind! And I've been rereading This Is Orson Welles so I'm angling from his side, hopefully pacinoyes can illuminate us on Olivier's behalf haha.
In some ways I find Welles a more fascinating figure to discuss—more than Olivier—in terms of their relationship with Shakespeare. But specifically I don’t think there’s ever been an American more involved and consumed by Shakespeare than Welles. I’ll just gush for a second, some "highlights" (pre-Kane) that I love :
> ’33 Welles (he’s 18) cowrites and illustrates what becomes “Everybody’s Shakespeare” a popular text in high schools nationwide that attempts to make the Bard more accessible and assist in staging productions. The texts were also accompanied by the first ever full length recordings of the Bard.
> ’36 Welles (20) adapts and directs Voodoo Macbeth, the amazing all black Harlem production. In the same year he adapts Hamlet for radio and omits the “to be or not to be” soliloquy!
> ’37 Welles (22) adapts directs and costars in his modern set “anti-fascist” Julius Caesar at his own Mercury Theatre to great acclaim. He adds in a song from Henry VIII.
Btwn writings, lectures, radio, theater, Welles was ever dedicated, often spending his own money… and later on too he’d as often as possible bring the Bard into the mainstream, he must’ve had a dozen or so little “performances” on The Dean Martin Show..…
As for his movies: the mixed bag Macbeth (or I sometimes call it his “after hours” Macbeth), an expedited adaptation but it’s interesting and gets better as it goes on. Othello, which I find really vividly well made, remarkably paced. Chimes at Midnight (mixing 5 Bard texts)—has there ever been a more suited actor to play Falstaff? Film is quite terrific too. Others: he’s turned Merchant of Venice, and his own making of Othello, into little self-funded essay-projects. He may well be the touchstone for what Pacino was doing (wonderfully) with Looking For Richard.
And it's too bad early on his films were viewed thru Olivier's refined and high degree: his Macbeth movie premiered in ’48 a week after Olivier’s Hamlet, and critics couldn’t reconcile the two for what they were. They had to be compared and Olivier towered over him. I'll admit now that I'm way behind on some of Olivier's Shakespeare films. But at any rate.... he’s, by all accounts, the apogee of Shakespeare adaptation and technique. Welles seemed to always kinda have a more innately “punk” relationship to Shakespeare and in adapting his work. And being American, working with smaller budgets, etc, it was a harder go of it.
Welles failed more openly too, often chaotically: from the ill-received Macbeth to the even worse received ’56 King Lear production in NY, where he was confined to a wheelchair for all of the 20 performances. He never returned to the American stage. Not to mention the struggle he’s had with distributors cutting and recutting his films, a ceaseless bevy of technical issues, or them rarely wanting to fund his projects incl his later Lear ambitions. He wanted to play “the old thunderer” - as he called Lear - again more definitively but passed away before he could.
Here's a lengthy but quite detailed and interesting New Yorker article "How the rivalry of Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier made Shakespeare modern."
Now how do we get Kenneth Branagh and Vincent D'Onofrio to star in an adaptation of the Austin Pendleton play Orson's Shadow !!
Having recently revisited Welles's Shakespearean oeuvre for my montage, it's amazing that he doesn't have the esteem and acclaim Olivier does in that arena. An American daring to tackle the Bard, having the balls to cut and winnow the text as he does, and to take on Othello, Macbeth, Lear and (his finest) Falstaff with such alacrity? Welles was a force to be reckoned with, and his direction is top-notch (he's my runner-up in that category for Chimes of Midnight). 'Tis a shame we never got to see him do Lear later in life, when I think it would've worked better.
> ’33 Welles (he’s 18) cowrites and illustrates what becomes “Everybody’s Shakespeare” a popular text in high schools nationwide that attempts to make the Bard more accessible and assist in staging productions. The texts were also accompanied by the first ever full length recordings of the Bard.
> ’36 Welles (20) adapts and directs Voodoo Macbeth, the amazing all black Harlem production. In the same year he adapts Hamlet for radio and omits the “to be or not to be” soliloquy!
> ’37 Welles (22) adapts directs and costars in his modern set “anti-fascist” Julius Caesar at his own Mercury Theatre to great acclaim. He adds in a song from Henry VIII.
Btwn writings, lectures, radio, theater, Welles was ever dedicated, often spending his own money… and later on too he’d as often as possible bring the Bard into the mainstream, he must’ve had a dozen or so little “performances” on The Dean Martin Show..…
As for his movies: the mixed bag Macbeth (or I sometimes call it his “after hours” Macbeth), an expedited adaptation but it’s interesting and gets better as it goes on. Othello, which I find really vividly well made, remarkably paced. Chimes at Midnight (mixing 5 Bard texts)—has there ever been a more suited actor to play Falstaff? Film is quite terrific too. Others: he’s turned Merchant of Venice, and his own making of Othello, into little self-funded essay-projects. He may well be the touchstone for what Pacino was doing (wonderfully) with Looking For Richard.
And it's too bad early on his films were viewed thru Olivier's refined and high degree: his Macbeth movie premiered in ’48 a week after Olivier’s Hamlet, and critics couldn’t reconcile the two for what they were. They had to be compared and Olivier towered over him. I'll admit now that I'm way behind on some of Olivier's Shakespeare films. But at any rate.... he’s, by all accounts, the apogee of Shakespeare adaptation and technique. Welles seemed to always kinda have a more innately “punk” relationship to Shakespeare and in adapting his work. And being American, working with smaller budgets, etc, it was a harder go of it.
Welles failed more openly too, often chaotically: from the ill-received Macbeth to the even worse received ’56 King Lear production in NY, where he was confined to a wheelchair for all of the 20 performances. He never returned to the American stage. Not to mention the struggle he’s had with distributors cutting and recutting his films, a ceaseless bevy of technical issues, or them rarely wanting to fund his projects incl his later Lear ambitions. He wanted to play “the old thunderer” - as he called Lear - again more definitively but passed away before he could.
Here's a lengthy but quite detailed and interesting New Yorker article "How the rivalry of Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier made Shakespeare modern."
Now how do we get Kenneth Branagh and Vincent D'Onofrio to star in an adaptation of the Austin Pendleton play Orson's Shadow !!
